Hi, I’ve seen a few posts on this topic from a while back, but am having a hard time trying to get this to work using the latest version of deadline. Basically we are setup in two different locations, using a dropbox account to sync our working files to our respective workstations / rendernodes. We are looking for a way to configure deadline across both locations so that all our machines can connect to the same repository and have access to the monitor. It seems like there is a way to do this using the Remote Connection Server but so far I’ve been unable to get it working. Has anyone managed to achieve a “rookie” setup like this?
Remote Connection Server allows communicating to Deadline over https. I would set up an ssh tunnel to the RCS host, and connect to it.
worker — ssh tunnel — rcs
What have you tried?
[This guide ](Securing the Remote Connection Server | AWS Thinkbox shows how to set it up with NGINX for SSL.
Thanks for the reply. I have tried following the thinkbox guides but I think there’s probably an understanding of basic networking required, that I don’t have!
With security concerns aside, if I was to set up port forwarding for port 4433 on the machine with the remote connection server, what would I need to use as the host name / IP address override on the RCS in order for a worker to find it?
Well, if you want to connect from outside the local network, you need a way to expose a connection to the world.
You need to have a public ip through which you either ssh, or you can set up a vpn using OpenVPN (which is common in vfx). With the vpn, once connected, you act as if the resources are on your local network. You join the local network from outside and contact RCS on its local IP (e.g. 10.1.100.10). It does require some setup.
There are also commercial solutions, where the public vpn endpoint is hosted somewhere else, and you use as a jump off point.
I do not know enough about your network setup. Is it home networks from all sides? Is there a company network to use as a hub?
The other option I mentioned is to set an ssh tunnel to the RCS host
ssh -L 2222:127.0.0.1:22 ip-of-rcs
I have managed to get it working, by opening a port on the machine with the RCS installed, and the router at that location.
Does this setup leave me exposed to security risks even if the connection to the RCS requires TLS certificates?
Both locations are home networks yes. I’m amazed its actually working now. Because we are using a dropbox setup, which essentially mirrors the local asset drives on both machines, would we still require a VPN or is it more a case of being more secure using one.
I guess I’m now looking for the simplest way to make it more secure - if it needs to be - without changing too much!
thanks again for your help.
If you managed to connect it through the router, that should be fine. Using TLS should be sufficient, security-wise.
Can’t comment on the dropbox setup because I’ve never tried something similar. Does it give you problems with synchronization ever? The VPN might render it unnecessary, since then you can share local file systems to the other machines. Probably a hybrid setup would work as well.
That’s good to know. We have used a few different cloud syncing software in the past and had issues but dropbox has been great so far and only rarely flags a sync error. We’ll see how it goes with this setup though. Thanks again for your help it is much appreciated.
We’ve been using a Deadline/Dropbox workflow for 2.5 years now, and it’s been very nice; we adjust the Windows registry so that the OS believes one of our DB folders is a letter drive, allowing all of our workstations to have the same file path for our render folders - regardless of where/how each artist installs DB on their particular machine.
It hasn’t been flawless, but currently the pros still outweigh the cons for our particular workflow.
Ah nice, that’s a step up from us! We are using dropbox on the same letter drive which becomes quite a specific setup for freelancers etc. to match. I’d be interested to know what the registry edit is!?
The other issue I think we will have in the future is storage - we currently have two 2TB drives, one for assets which is syncing via google drive (its not really changing much at all from day to day) and the dropbox drive for projects. Ideally, we would switch everything to dropbox as it does seem way better, but it seems its not possible to sync dropbox to more than one location per machine, so I guess we’ll have to consolidate onto a single larger drive at some point.
First off, a special thanks to Adam Elder for developing/sharing this technique:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\DOS Devices]
"A:"="\\??\\C:\\Users\\MyUsername\\Dropbox\\SubFolderA\\SubFolderB"
Copy and paste this into a txt file with the extension .reg, with ‘A’ being the letter drive you wish to create, and C → being the path to the Dropbox folder you wish it to link to. Save it, double click to run the file, reboot your machine. If you have an issue afterwards, you can manually edit the registry entries by opening up the Registry editor and going to:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\DOS Devices
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Amazing. Will give it a go at some point when the projects are quiet! Thanks!
I 100% would not expose Deadline to the internet. It’s usually not great to expose apps like these through your firewall… no matter how secure you think it is. It’s a single point of failure… and forces you to put a whole lot of trust into the people that made it…
Much better to go for a VPN or ssh tunnel at this point.